Bali bombing suspect, Mukhlas, arrested

AM - Thursday, 5 December , 2002 00:00:00

Reporter: Tim Palmer

LINDA MOTTRAM: Indonesia's police have announced another startling breakthrough in the pursuit of the extremist Islamist movement Jemaah Islamiah and the Bali bomb ring.

They've arrested the man who, the police recently claimed, had taken over JI's violent operations throughout South East Asia.

The man is Mukhlas, the brother of Bali suspect, Amrozi, who is already in custody.

Police had said they thought that Mukhlas was on the run elsewhere in the region but after picking him up in a raid in Central Java, they're claiming his place in the chain is even higher than the previously named mastermind, Imam Samudra

Indonesia Correspondent Tim Palmer reports.

TIM PALMER: Several days ago the Indonesian chief of the Bali investigation, General I Made Pastika, made it clear that the elder brother of the arrested bomb suspect Amrozi, the man known as Mukhlas, or Ali Gufron, had moved up the chain of command of Jemaah Islamiah and had become the focus of police investigations.

TIM PLAMER: "We believe is now living in Malaysia or thereabouts," General Pastika said. "He has taken over the role of Hambali as the co-ordinator of Jemaah Islamiah for the whole the south-east Asia region."

Today Indonesia's police revealed that that was only half true. They still believe that Mukhlas holds the key role of directing Jemaah Islamiah's attack plans in the region, but in fact he was in Indonesia all along.

And so came the shock announcement of possibly the bomb investigation's biggest arrest yet, from Indonesia's Chief of Detectives, Erwin Mappaseng.

[Erwin Mappaseng speaking]

"Yes it is Ali Gufron, alias Mukhlas," he said, "he's higher than Imam Samudra. His position is above those who were just organising the Bali blast and he replaced Hambali. Now we have arrested him."

Police had caught Mukhlas in a house in Klata [phonetic], near the central Java city of Solo, spiritual base of Jemaah Islamiah's detained cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

It was known that police had several central Java locations under surveillance, but no one had expected that Mukhlas would be the catch.

He was taken in, along with his wife and six other people.

It is a crucial breakthrough for police. Just as it became clear that while the previous suspect arrested, Imam Samudra, was happy to name those beneath him in the death plot and claim he was ready for the death penalty for his own role, he was refusing to acknowledge any figures in the Bali blast above his own place in the chain.

Now police have a new piece in the JI jigsaw.

It was Mukhlas who persuaded his own brother, Amrozi, into adopting radical Islam and almost in penance for his past waywardness, into organising the vehicles and chemicals for the Bali bomb.

But with Malaysian and Singaporean officials also seeking Mukhlas, it is clearly felt his influence and contacts go much higher, contacts Indonesian police will have the first chance to question him about.

There are questions too for the Indonesian security establishment though. Among them, how this man now deemed by governments across the region key to the extremist operations of Jemaah Islamiah was, until a few months ago, able to move around his home village in East Java apparently without any suggestion that he might be detained.